Centre median improvements along St. Albert Trail will be underway this summer.
Larry Galye, senior project manager for the city, said undertaking the work in phases will help minimize traffic disruptions.
Work is scheduled to get underway on Monday with the first stage between St. Vital Avenue and St. Anne Street.
“Then we’ll move to the south end,” said Galye. The second phase is work on the trail between Sterling Street and Grenier Place, the third Grenier Place to Gate Avenue, the fourth Gate Avenue to the Superstore entrance.
“We’re going to do all the removals, all the replacements, we’ll put the concrete replacements back that we need to do, we’ll do the concrete verge and as well place the topsoil,” Galye said. That will be completed for each separate stage.
During the work traffic in the impacted phase will be down to two lanes in each direction.
Finally trees and shrubs for all the phases will go in last.
“They want to do all the tree planting at once,” Galye said.
During the planting portion of the project they’ll try and keep traffic disruptions to the off-peak hours – for example, have lane closures heading north in the morning, when most of the traffic is heading south.
“We’ll try and maintain traffic as much as possible. And that’s why we’re doing it in phases,” Galye said.
Depending on weather, the centre media improvements are scheduled to be completed by the end of September.
“It’s basically going to look identical to what we have between St. Anne Street and Sterling Street,” Galye said of the final results. The St. Anne-Sterling St. Albert Trail project was completed in 2012.
Where trees aren’t an appropriate addition – in some cases they would obscure sightlines – lower shrubs will be added instead.
